Really Crazy Side

We added someone to our family. Meet Morris. He is a forlorn 13 year old cat that we took home from the shelter. I'm already in love with him, Ken hates it when I say that (you can't love something you own!). But he's so sweet tempered, and so skinny and in need of good lovin' and a hot meal. When we first brought him home, he was vomiting and eating poorly and was incontinent. So we spent a lot of money at the vet to find out that a) he's not in kidney failure, and b) he doesn't have cancer. They ended up scratching their heads and giving him a whopping antibiotic shot and IV fluids over 2 days. And it worked. He's so much bettter, we think he'll make it. By the way, Crabby hates him. Really. Turns out she's not a meek, mild little girl after all. Why doesn't she hate Mitt, my sister's big ole boy kitty? I don't get it.

I've worked a lot the last month, it's been been mostly routine. As much as a psych ward is routine. Very few emergency injections, I think I gave only two, and one of those was a big learning experience. We had a young 21 year old woman, very slight, she weighed about 90 lbs. and she had a little freak-out that involved pounding on walls and screaming. She clearly needed sedation. One of the docs (not her assigned doc) was there, so we quickly got an order and did it. Within minutes, we put her to bed. But later, she stumbles out and almost falls. She's very pale, we take her blood pressure and it's scary-low. We force her to sit up and drink fluids, she's able to respond to questions although she keeps asking to be put back in bed. We call the doc and he says to force more fluids and assign a watcher so she doesn't fall. And he was mad -- the thorazine dose was much too large for someone so small. We repeated this little event a few hours later. Important lesson-- dosing is important, and ask about the patient if you don't know them. Overall, this is a lesson I'm familiar with: Don't be in too much of a hurry. Check it out. We've had a lot of younger patients, many college students, who got in trouble with drugs. That stuff they're selling called Bath Salts or Spice (synthetic marijuana) is really lousy crap that needs to be illegal. You should see how kids behave after ODing on it. And how long it takes (ever?) to return to normal. I think they've permanently damaged their brains. Makes me mad.

Conversation overheard between two patients starting to make an acquaintance: "How long have you been here?" "Oh, three days, they just moved me over from the other side (meaning the PICU)" "Oh! Isn't that the really crazy side?"

Class is almost over, it ends July 5th and it feels like I just started. It's been shockingly easy, basically show up, do a little reading, write a few paragraphs each week and do one group project. That's it. Wish I could've knocked out two nursing classes like this. I start Human Sexuality after that. If that's not a fun-o-rama, I'm going to feel cheated.

My class is on Healthcare Policy, and it's actually quite interesting and I've learned a lot. It's inspired me to become politically active, so much about healthcare needs to change. I'm going to attend my first PAPNA meeting on Wednesday, that's the Psychiatric Advanced Practice Nurses of Austin. So next time, I'll talk a little about that.

And It Starts Again

Started summer school Thursday. Feels like nothing really ended, but that's OK. The class, on Healthcare Policy, appears to be very manageable. I'm even planning to work about one day a week. Enjoyed my review class in Boston, although I'm very angry at Expedia and will never, never use them again. I paid for my room, at $440 a night, at the Boston Sheraton because that's where the course was held. I paid for this 2 months in advance. Friday night before I leave on Monday, Expedia tells me that due to a "system error", they have to move me to a hotel 5 miles away. I talked to them for over an hour, spoke to the supervisor, to no avail. The hotel contact really wanted to help, but they were having a telecom conference at the same time and were completely booked. She said that Expedia does this all the time -- they oversell their rooms and then move people. So if you care about where you stay, don't use them. 

Nile and I have had some good times at the Austin Animal Center performing cat care duties. Here's Nile with "Noisy" as they named him. He is a tiny kitten who can't bear to be away from people & will cry and fling himself against the bars when left alone. Someone really lonely needs to adopt this little guy. We clean cages, talk to customers, feed cats, and of course, play with them a little. It's great. And they really need cat volunteers badly. Seems like everyone wants to work with the dogs. We are thinking about fostering some kittens, we got an email Friday that the shelter is "negative 8" for cat space -- meaning, eight cats are sitting in carriers because the cages are full. Look at these statistics (shocking): in May 2011, the shelter took in 750 cats. This year, we took in 1000. Something is terribly wrong with that and it points to a serious spay/neuter need in this community. I know that Austin offers this service free, but obviously people aren't utilizing it. I wonder what we could do to make it easier and more accessible? 

Dani graduated. Here we are at her graduation party. She has a summer of nothing ahead - well, nothing required, let's say. Idil will visit, she's going to Houston for a week, and we've talked about her taking a nurse's aide training class, but it's a lot of time relaxing. We bought tickets for the NYU delivery in August, we'll spend about 3 days in the city. (that's what they say up there in Jersey - "the city". I'm cool, I know the lingo. ha.)

My good friend Karen retired early from XOM so I'm going to Baton Rouge at the end of June for her party. I'll see some people I haven't seen since I left in 2005, should be interesting. My life is so radically different now. I'm a nurse! I'm a student! And I'm so lucky - I live in Austin!

I've worked a lot in May. I've had two patients with interesting cases - one has Renfield's syndrome, which if you look up, is clinical vampirism. Yes, he believes he's a vampire, namely he receives sexual stimulation from consuming blood from his partners. And he really looked the part, I must say that he put some effort into that, down to the blue nail polish. Won't say any more to preserve his anonymity, but this is the first case of this I've observed. The other patient was someone who we first believed to have squeaked in through the cracks - we are not a forensic unit, meaning we don't take patients who've committed crimes as part of their recent hospitalization, but we certainly have a gray area around that. For one thing, they can be under investigation but not charged. And we have many patients with a criminal history - every day I'm there, at least one patient has a tear-drop jail tattoo on their face. So this guy was under suspicion of killing his wife, then making a suicide attempt. Last year, I had a patient with this exact same scenario (who ended up being convicted) and both of these guys had a very similar affect -- they were wooden, dead, "flat" in our terms. How are you today? "fine". Are you feeling suicidal, as you were when admitted? "no". Have you attended group therapy and found that helpful? "no". Tell me why you haven't gone to that. "don't want to." And so it goes. Eventually you give up. Later, I was told that murder charges weren't going to be filed against him, just domestic violence ("just") although that could've caused the death. Not a good, solid endorsement.


I've been able to swim almost every day now - it's divine. Ken and I walked the Lakeway trail last night and the little streambeds are all full of water. Vastly different from last year. Cross my fingers that it continues.